20 Things You Can Do In 20 Minutes to Be More Successful at Work

4. Your Vendor, Revealed
Ask your most important tech vendors to conduct an assessment of their relationship with your organization. "This requires minimal effort on the part of the CIO," says Chris Pattacini, vice president of outsourcing consultancy Nautilus Advisors, "but it can pay big dividends."

Of course, there's a catch. Vendors might not be as honest as you'd like for fear the information could be used against them in future negotiations. Put the vendor reps at ease and make sure to invite them to rate not only their organization's efforts but yours as well. "The assessment can spark a great dialogue about innovation, relationship issues and other below-the-radar opportunities for improvement," says Pattacini.

To make sure the vendor representative follows through, give him an achievable goal and a deadline. Ask him to share his top three ideas for improving the relationship at the next client-vendor meeting, says Eugene Kublanov, CEO of globalization advisory firm NeoIT.
-S.O.

5. Self-Knowledge Is Power
Twenty minutes is a perfect amount of time for some good, honest introspection.
Gene Bedell, author of Three Steps to Yes: The Gentle Art of Getting Your Way and the upcoming The Millionaire in the Mirror, promotes the merits of structured introspection.
"Sustained changes in behavior can lead to important improvements in things like career, company, work-life balance," says Bedell, a former IT leader at First Boston, among other companies. "A period of serious self-analysis is a good place to start."

Find a quiet room where you won't be disturbed. Ask yourself if you're working toward something or just working. Do you want to be CIO of a Fortune 500 company? Do you want to start a business? Zone in on your passion, says Bedell. "It doesn't matter what you have your sights set on, but they must be set on something," he says. "If you don't know where you want to go, it's unlikely you'll succeed long-term." This step should take five minutes.

If your goal is vague—grow, get promoted, make more money—spend the next five minutes seeking specificity. Throw out modesty and uncertainty. Someone's got to come up with the next Google or become the new CIO of GE. Why not you?

The last 10 minutes will be the "10 minutes of truth," says Bedell. Ask yourself what you're going to do when you leave this quiet spot in minute 21. Will whatever it is help you achieve the goal you just set? Or will you be just getting a job done, earning a paycheck? If it's the latter, you've still learned something important: You need to change.
-S.O.

6. Call a Customer (Bonus Points If They're Irate)
That's right—volunteer to contact a real, live customer.
"Much of what IT is involved in directly impacts the business product and service and the end consumer/customer," says Jack J. Santos, CIO Executive Strategist at the Burton Group.

Reach out to your closest contact in sales, marketing or customer service. Ask for a customer you can contact who's been outspoken in the past. It wouldn't hurt to pick a high-value or highly visible customer. "A positive exchange could create great buzz afterward which reaches other parts of the company," says Santos. Want to really wow people? Ask for an unsatisfied customer whose experience IT might have the power to turn around.

The definition of customer will depend on your business. A hospital CIO might talk to a physician who's dealing with electronic records management or, if the organization is technologically sophisticated, a patient. Try a doc who doesn't normally interact with IT or a patient who has.

This dialogue keeps you in touch with the real customer experience, says Santos, and it sends a message to the customer that the company cares. "It's perceived [by the customer] as astounding follow-up customer service."
-S.O.

7. Life Without E-Mail
When it comes to personal communication strategies, IT workers usually follow their CIO's lead. So if the CIO is always forwarding e-mails, adding to the cc line, piling attachments on top of attachments, IT staffers are sure to follow. Or, if the CIO displays greater comfort messaging with her BlackBerry than in interacting with peers, staffers will model that behavior.

To encourage more face-to-face interactions with internal and external customers, and to fight e-mail overload, CIOs should spend 20 minutes explaining to their col¬leagues and IT staffers why e-mail- free Fridays (or any other day of the week) is a good idea. And here's why: Companies that swear by "say no to e-mail" days (or even half days) find that it leads to more proactive decision making, better relations among coworkers and increased awareness of customer needs. Instead of an e-mail, staffers will pick up a phone or even drop by a customer or colleague in person.

Intel discovered that its employees were wasting six hours a week on e-mail. So a team has been piloting a range of initiatives, one of which is "Zero e-mail Friday." According to one of the team leaders, Nathan Zeldes, the goal is to attack a "cube culture" in which engineers, sometimes seated just a few feet from each other, rely on e-mail to exchange ideas. (The pilot finished in February and the team is spending March collecting data, interviewing users and drawing conclusions.) Other companies, such as Deloitte & Touche and U.S. Cellular, report success switching off e-mail for periods such as weekends. "All it takes," says Zeldes, "is one manager to decide to do something about it." What are you waiting for?
-Thomas Wailgum